Fig. 8

Effect of the parasite infection on the early kinetics of the midgut protease activity. P. argentipes flies were fed either on human blood or blood containing WT, ISP1KD, ISP1OE, ISP2KD and ISP2OE Leishmania parasites. At various times after blood-feeding the midguts were dissected and assayed for trypsin (a, c) and chymotrypsin (b, d) activity by using specific chromogenic substrates. The experiments were performed in triplicate and data are means ± SD from three separate experiments. An asterisk (*) denotes P ≤ 0.05 when compared to uninfected or WT as applicable (Student’s t-test)